View, Search, and Sort Orders

ShipStation Content Team

Updated July 31, 2023 14:19

Methods for managing the list of orders in the Order grid by controlling the view, sorting, or using search.

Once you have orders in ShipStation, you can view and manage them in the Orders tab.

Closeup of Toolbar with Orders tab selected

ShipStation offers several ways to view, search, and sort your orders so you can find the orders you need when you need them. This includes viewing your orders based on order status, using the search tool, and sorting the grid by field.

To learn how to use filters, review the Filter Orders article.

Understanding Order Statuses

The left-hand sidebar of the Orders grid displays the various order statuses your orders could be in. ShipStation displays Awaiting Shipment orders by default

If the order is paid for and ready to ship, the order status in ShipStation should be Awaiting Shipment. Most of your orders will import directly into this status.

V3 Orders tab left-hand sidebar, Order statuses. Red box highlights Awaiting Shipment status.

Once you create a label for an order, the order will automatically move into the Shipped status. Other actions you take can move orders into other statuses. Also, depending on the stores you connect, orders can sometimes import into other statuses like Awaiting Payment. Review the details in the status table below to learn more about how order statuses work in ShipStation.

Status	Details
Awaiting Payment	Any order indicating it is unpaid will import into Awaiting Payment. Not all stores support importing unpaid orders. Check our Integrations Help articles for order import details specific to your stores. ShipStation will update the order status to Awaiting Shipment when the store sends updated information indicating the order has been paid for. Or, you can manually mark the order as paid. You cannot create labels for orders that are in the Awaiting Payment status!
On Hold	On Hold orders are orders that you do not want to ship right away. You can move orders out of the Awaiting Shipment status so your shippers don't accidentally ship them before they are ready. For example, if an order contains an item for an out-of-stock product or has a fraud alert, you can move it to On Hold status until you are ready to ship it. You can manually put orders on hold at any time or use an Automation Rule to move orders to the On Hold status when they import. You can also manually remove a Hold on an order from the Orders tab or from within the Quicksearch and Advanced Search. A few stores, like Magento, support an On Hold status and can send that status to ShipStation as well. Check our Integrations Help articles to see specific details about your selling channel.
Awaiting Shipment	Ready to ship orders will import into the Awaiting Shipment status. This is where most of your order management will take place.
Pending Fulfilment	Orders you send to fulfilment but are not yet fulfilled will move to Pending Fulfilment. Additionally, Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime orders will import as Pending Fulfilment, unless you have added Amazon Buy Shipping to your ShipStation account.
Shipped	Once you print a label for an order, ShipStation will move the order into the Shipped status to indicate no more work needs to be done on this order. Orders will also move here when you mark them as shipped. ShipStation can import Shipped orders from your store so you can have a complete reporting of shipped orders in ShipStation.
Cancelled	Any order you cancel in ShipStation will be moved to the Cancelled status. ShipStation can also import cancelled orders from your store so you can have a complete reporting of all orders in ShipStation. However, ShipStation does not notify your store when you cancel orders in ShipStation. For this reason, we recommend canceling orders in your store and then refreshing ShipStation, to ensure the order status matches on both platforms.

The statuses for orders in your store may not exactly match the statuses ShipStation uses. That's because ShipStation statuses relate directly to your shipping workflow, which might require different statuses than what your store provides. ShipStation uses a process called mapping to determine which store statuses correspond to which ShipStation statuses.

For example, the status in your store for an order that is ready to ship might be Paid, Unfulfilled, or Authorized. ShipStation imports orders with these statuses into Awaiting Shipment.

Once you ship an order or mark it as shipped in ShipStation, however, we send a notification to your store so the store will update the order. This ensures the order status remains consistent between both ShipStation and your store platform.

Order Statuses in Your Stores

Each store handles order statuses according to its own standards, and not all stores support all statuses.

For details on supported features and statuses, as well as limitations for specific store platforms, review our Store & Marketplace Integrations articles for the stores you connect to ShipStation.

Search Orders

ShipStation has two search options for orders:

Use Quicksearch to quickly search for orders based on Recipient Name, Order Item, SKU, Order Number, or other criteria. Quicksearch is a Starts-with style search in the Orders tab, meaning the results of the search are items that start with the search value.
Use Advanced Search when you want to search across all or specific order statuses by combining filtering options and date criteria. Advanced search is a Contains style search for specific criteria in the Orders tab.

Search Results and Order Date

Quicksearch has no time limits for searching orders, so you can search orders as far back as when you started your account.
Advanced Search defaults to searching orders less than three months old, but you can customise the date filter to search orders as far back as when you started your account.

Quicksearch Orders

Use Quicksearch to locate orders with the following information:

Order Number
Buyer Name
Recipient Name
Company Name
Buyer Email Address
Username (the User's ID from a store or marketplace)
Recipient City
Recipient State
Recipient Address Line 1
Item Name
Item SKU
Tracking Number

Box highlights search field with text SH-, and the term-matching Order numbers in Order grid.

To help understand how the Quicksearch function works...

Quicksearch is a starts-with-style search. For example, if you receive an order from Saul Teesnak, ShipStation will break that name down into Saul and Teesnak. You'd be able to search for this order using Saul Teesnak, Saul, Teesnak, etc. However, you wouldn't find this order by searching for snak because the snak chunk starts with Tee.

The same applies to order numbers separated by dashes. The order number 121-657485676-89705 gets broken down into 121, 657485676, and 89705. You'd be able to find this order by typing in the whole order number, a chunk, or the beginning of any chunk.

You won't be able to Quicksearch for the last few digits of an order number, so use Advanced Search for this instead.

Cancel Orders from Quicksearch

After running a Quicksearch, you can cancel shipments in your search results that are in Awaiting Payment, On Hold, or Awaiting Shipment statuses.

If the order has already been cancelled or shipped the option will be disabled. Hover over the Cancel button to see a tooltip explaining why you cannot cancel orders in those statuses.

Advanced Search Orders

ShipStation provides an advanced search option to search orders by multiple search criteria and to refine the results of your advanced search using filters.

To perform an advanced search.

Click Advanced Search in the left-hand sidebar of the Orders grid.
Select the criteria for your search, then click Search.

See the table below for explanations of available search criteria.
Choose Reset to reset all fields and begin a new search, or select Exit Advanced Search and return to the regular view on the Orders grid.
Refine and narrow your advanced search results further by applying Order Filters from the Filter bar.

The GIF below shows an advanced search within a specific store to find orders designated with Backorder tags and sending a backorder notification email. See this article to learn how to create custom email templates.

The following table lists the criteria and parameters available in an advanced search.

Criteria	Parameters
Order Status	Awaiting Payment On Hold Awaiting Shipment Shipped Cancelled
Store	(Any) is the default state, meaning we search all stores. When you expand no stores are selected. When you select your first store, it will change (Any) to that store's name. When you select 2 or more it will update to 2 of x selected
Order #	Acts as a 'Contains' search, not a 'Starts with' search No character limits
Recipient Name or Email search	Acts as a 'Contains' search No character limits
Item Name	Acts as a 'Contains' search, not a 'Starts with' search No character limits
Item SKU	Acts as a 'Contains' search, not a 'Starts with' search No character limits
Item Option (Value)	This search can only be done in the Advanced Search. It is not an existing filter in ShipStation. Search results display what the customer selected, not the item option name. Item options and their corresponding values work as key:value pairs. Keys (e.g. ‘Flavor’ in red) CANNOT be searched, but the values (‘Peach’ in green) CAN be searched. In searching for your favorite drink, you’d want ‘Peach ’a specific value listed under the broad category of options (key) called ‘Flavor’. In the example shown below, item options like ‘Flavor’ are the key, and the value is ‘Peach’.
Order Date	By default, we search the past 3 months, but there is no limit to how far back you can search. To change the search date range, click the calendar icon and select the date or type the date into the Order Date fields.

Sort Orders

Use the column headers in the Orders grid to sort orders by criteria like Order Date, Age, Recipient Name, or other order information.

Click-and-drag columns to arrange them in any sequence you prefer. Scroll the screen left or right to view all columns.

Click the text in a column header (for example, Age, Item Name, or Store) to sort that column's contents in either ascending or descending order (alphabetical, chronological, numerical).

GIF demonstrates how to click column headers to sort orders by Age & Date columns

Group Orders by Common Attributes

The Group By feature allows you to group orders in the Awaiting Shipment status in your order grid by a variety of attributes. This can help you quickly find orders with something in common so they can be prepared together or prioritise to more easily fit into your workflow.

The Group By feature allows you to group orders by the following attributes:

Store
# Line Items
Total Quantity
Country
Item Name
Item SKU
Requested Service

Once you create groups in your Orders Grid, you can further sort within the groups and bulk update all orders within a selected group.

To group your orders in the Orders Grid:

Click the Group By button.
Select a field to group your orders by from the drop-down menu.
Click Combine with another field if you would like to add another field to group orders by.
Select another attribute to group orders by, if necessary.

The Group By button will display how many attributes are currently in use.

Your orders grid will now be sorted into groups by the fields you specified.

Orders Grid grouped by Order Date and Items name

Click column headers to further sort within the groups, or select entire groups to bulk update all orders within the group. You can also add filters while your grid is grouped to refine your view further.

To return the Orders Grid to its original state, click the Group By button and deselect the fields.

View Multi-Item Orders

Orders with multiple items will display (Multiple) in the Item SKU and Item Name columns. These orders will also have a disclosure triangle in the Order # column that allows you to open the order and view all items contained within it directly in the Orders grid.

If you combine orders, this will also create an order with multiple items and multiple order numbers.

The images below show an order with multiple items and an order that has been combined. The combined order also displays (Multiple) in the Order # column.

Orders grid. Boxes outline a multi-item order and an order that has been combined.

Click the disclosure triangle in the Order # column to reveal the multiple items and order numbers in the grid.

Orders grid with multi-item order expanded, showing the items and Order # of the combined order

Group Items in Shipping Sidebar

When you select multiple orders in your Orders Grid, you can tell ShipStation how to group the order items in the Shipping Sidebar. You can select to group them by Orders or by Items:

Orders	Items

To adjust how the items are grouped, click the action icon and select the option you wish to use.

Group by menu displays the Orders and Items option

To use this feature, you must select 2 or more orders and check the Show Sidebar option.

Orders grid with 2 orders selected and the Show Sidebar option checked